Descendant Read Free Page A

last week, even though there was no heat. I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, lit one and blew smoke out of my nose. Then I unfolded my street map of Antwerp and spread it out over the glass-topped table.
    “Here’s Markgravestraat, where Ann De Wouters was killed, and this is the way the Canadian division was coming in, so it’s pretty unlikely that the Screechers would have tried to escape along Martenstraat. I reckon they left the building by the back entrance, which would have taken them out
here
, onto Kipdorp. That means they had only two options. Either turn left, and head northwest toward the Scheldt; or turn right, and make their way across Kipdorpbrug toward the Centraal Station.”
    Corporal Little studied the map carefully. “I don’t reckon they would have headed for the river, sir. Where would they go from there?”
    I agreed with him. They couldn’t have escaped north because the Germans had blown all the bridges over the Albert Canal. Besides, the Brits were holding the waterfront area and most of the Brits were untrainedconscripts—waiters and bank clerks and greengrocers—and they were even more trigger-happy than the Poles. They would let loose a wild fusillade of poorly aimed rifle-fire and then shout “ ’Oo goes there?” afterward.
    I circled a five-block area with my pencil. “We’ll start in this streets around Kipdorp and work our way eastward along Sant Jacobs Markt.”
    Corporal Little massaged the back of his prickly neck. “That’s going to be one hell of a job, sir, with respect. Think of all them hundreds of cellars they could be lying low in. Think of all of them hundreds of attics, and all of them hundreds of closets and linen chests and steamer-trunks. It could easy take us
days
before Frank picks up a sniff of them, and by that time they could be halfway back to wherever they’re headed.”
    “We’ll find them, Henry, I promise you. I have a hunch about these particular Screechers.”
    “With respect, sir, you had a hunch about those Screechers in Rouen; and you had another hunch about those Screechers in Brionne.”
    “I know. But those Screechers we caught in France, they were like cornered rats, weren’t they? They were running and hiding and it took everything we could do to catch up with them.”
    “Well, sure. But what makes these guys any different?”
    “Think about it. They must have been keeping themselves holed up someplace in the city center for the past five weeks. Either that, or they’ve had the brass cojones to make their way back in. They wanted to have their revenge on Ann De Wouters, and they obviously didn’t care what chances they took. They were German-speaking, right? But they walked through a city crowdedwith British and Canadian troops, and they cut a woman open in front of her children, and they stayed there long enough to drink ninety percent of her blood.”
    Corporal Little looked impressed but still slightly mystified. “So what does this specifically lead you to conclude, sir?”
    “Don’t you get it, Henry?
They’re not scared of us
. They’re not frightened to come out in the open. That’s why I think that we’ll find them. The only trouble is, when we
do
find them, they’re not going to go down without one hell of a fight.”
    Corporal Little gave me a smile of growing understanding. “In that case, sir—we’d better double the watch on our rear ends, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Go get the kit, will you?” I told him. Most of the time I couldn’t work out if he was a genius or an idiot savant.

The Kit
    The Kit was contained in a khaki tin box about the size of a briefcase. It was scratched and dented, but then we had been carrying it with us ever since we had landed in Normandy in June, and we had used it five times since then.
    Corporal Little opened it up and together we inspected the contents. A large Bible, with a polished cover carved out of ash-wood and a silver crucifix mounted on the front. A large glass flask of